Out of the Shadows of History
by StarSpray
Summary: When Estel was nine years old, Erestor gave him a large box filled with wooden blocks of various shapes and sizes. Estel spent that entire summer building towers and cities out of stories and history lessons.


_Written for lynndyre for the 2017 Innumerable Stars exchange on AO3_

* * *

When Estel was nine years old, Erestor gave him a large box filled with wooden blocks of various shapes and sizes. Estel spent that entire summer building towers and cities out of stories and history lessons. Elrond tripped over Gondolin half a dozen times, and found Menegroth once underneath a complicated fortress made of blankets and chairs and all of the pillows out of Gilraen and Estel's rooms. Gilraen herself had been sitting inside with Estel, singing of Beren and Lúthien.

After he learned the history of Arnor and its split and slow decline, Estel built Annúminas beside a duckpond in the garden. Elrond watched him carefully stack the blocks to create a tall tower that looked out over the water.

It reminded him of his own childhood in Sirion. He and Elros had not used wooden blocks, but had built fortresses and watchtowers of sand, pretending that from the tops they could see Vingilot as it approached. Sometimes Elwing had joined them, and let them use a real spyglass to scan the horizon, although almost all they ever saw were only fishing vessels sailing about the bay.

"Ada Elrond!" Estel stepped carefully away from his creation and ran to Elrond's side. "Look! Does it look like Annúminas did? I found a picture in the library…"

Elrond smiled. "It does indeed," he said, and went to sit in the grass nearby. "And what can you tell me of its history, Estel?"

 _xx_

Eventually, they visited Annúminas in person. Estel was fifteen and in the midst of a growth spurt, but eager to see what remained of the realm of Arnor whose he had been studying now for years. Elladan and Elrohir rode with them, and Glorfindel, who spent the journey telling tales of the wars against Angmar, to which Estel listened enraptured.

They arrived in Annúminas at sunset. It had once been the most glorious time to see the towers of Elendil's citadel, built of pale stone that caught and reflected the ever-changing colors, gleaming against the sky as stars appeared one by one overhead. Elrond had not been with Elendil when he had chosen this spot for his city, but he had seen the first stones of its foundation laid.

He had not returned to it after Arnor had split into three. This was not Fornost, that had been overrun and abandoned in wartime; Annúminas had been abandoned only slowly, dwindling from the mighty city that Elendil had built to a scattering of small villages among the ruins, to a place where wild things had returned to live, and towers crumbled slowly to dust, overtaken by moss and ivy; trees grew up through once-elaborate mosaics, roots breaking up the tiles and rendering the patterns unrecognizable.

Elladan and Elrohir went with Glorfindel to set up camp beside the lake, and to fish for their supper. Estel and Elrond walked through the streets; Estel had a hundred questions about the city and what it had been like in the beginning. Elrond answered as best he could, idly twisting Vilya on his finger as they walked. Through its power he could sense the life teeming here—not just the vines and the moss and the trees, but the animals that had turned ancient shops and homes into dens. A few streets away a deer and her fawn grazed; generations of a badger family had made their home in a garden nearby. And beneath that he could feel the memory of the life that had come before, of those born and buried here, who had cut the stone to shape the buildings and tilled the land and loved it.

Estel stopped beside a crumbling column, resting his hand on the pitted surface. "Will it ever be rebuilt?" he asked.

Elrond looked at him, and for a moment he glimpsed Estel as Aragorn, full-grown into his power, bearing the Elendilmir on his brow, standing in the midst of a flurry of activity, the city rising again all around him.

"Perhaps," he said.

 _xx_

Many years later, they stood together in another city named for the sun, again at twilight. Music rose up from the city below them, and drifted out of the citadel behind as all of Minas Tirith celebrated the marriage of King Elessar and Arwen Undómiel. In the east the first glimmer of moonrise could be seen over the Ephel Dúath, where for so many years the sky had been obscured by thick fumes and smokes. Gil-Estel shone high overhead, bright and clear—clearer than it had seemed in a long time, although Elrond thought that might have been only his imagination.

Before them stood the White Tree, just taller than the Halflings and in full blossom. Elrond looked at Aragorn. He was no longer a gawky boy of fifteen or a youth of twenty, but the light in his eyes was the same, and his smile as he looked out over the city—his city—reminded Elrond of the child who had built himself realms out of wooden blocks in unexpected corners of Rivendell. He twisted absently the Ring of Barahir on his finger, as Elrond so often fidgeted with Vilya.

He wore it still—its power was gone, leaving a void behind that was filled by a bone-deep weariness, and a grief that an end had had to come to Celebrimbor's greatest work alongside the greatest weapon of their Enemy. But that had been the expected price, and Elrond was glad to pay it.

"I am proud of you, my son," he said. "You have risen higher than any of yours sires since the days of Elendil."

Aragorn looked at him; he smiled, still, but there was grief behind it. "I only regret that my mother did not live to see this day," he said. "And that you will not be there when I am finally able to return to the north kingdom." Years of rebuilding stretched yet before Gondor, before Aragorn could turn his thoughts and attention to Arnor and the rebuilding of Annúminas—a plan that Elrond knew lay close to his heart. By the time that project began, Elrond would be long gone, across the Sea. He regretted also that he would never see Annúminas returned to its former glory, or Arnor and Gondor truly reunited as one realm, but the time of the Rings was over, and so it was time for the Ring bearers to pass into the West.

And he would rather part from Aragorn, and from Arwen, now at the height of their joy and in the prime of their lives, than linger to watch them wear away with the years.

The moon rose silver bright over the Mountains of Shadow, shadowed no longer. Somewhere in the lower levels of the city, a joyful song lifted up to greet it.


End file.
